Buying up shares in an NFL team is “an opportunity to make more money,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College in Massachusetts who has written written several books on economics in sports. Zimbalist said the league’s new collective bargaining agreement and TV contracts “will do wonders for Mike Brown’s balance sheet.’’

‘‘There aren’t a lot of great investments in the (present) world economy,’’ Zimbalist said, adding the timing of the purchase likely has a lot do with the settlement of the CBA and the bright financial future of the league.

Forbes recently valued the Bengals at $875 million – 25th out of the 32 NFL teams.

At last week’s league owners meetings in Dallas, the NFL’s finance committee and owners approved a series of limited partner transactions, including the Bengals’, the Sports Business Journal reported.

The biggest deal involved the sale of the Jacksonville Jaguars to Shahid Khan for $760 million. Forbes valued the Jaguars at $725 million.

With the deal, the Brown family would own all but a handful of approximately 586 shares in the franchise. The outstanding shares are owned by the family of Edison Miyawaki and by Lindberg, who owns one share.

Entities owning 100 percent of an NFL team are rare. The only two are thought to be Dallas, with Jerry Jones and his family, and soon Jacksonville’s Khan.

An Enquirer report in April 2009 revealed a contentious, often-bitter relationship between Brown and Knowlton, who feuded for years over many issues, including what Knowlton believed were exorbitant salaries paid by the team to the Brown family members in the front office.

That report was gleaned from transcripts of a 2007 Hamilton County Probate Court trial over Knowlton's $300 million estate. Transcripts of Mike Brown’s testimony in that trial provided a rare glimpse into finances of the team and the Brown family.

If the $200 million price is accurate, each of the 176 shares of Knowlton’s estate will cost $1.14 million.

That is far in excess of the $100,000 per share the Brown family paid Knowlton as part of the 1994 agreement that saw Knowlton sell 60 of his then-236 shares of Bengals stock to the Brown family for $6 million.

That transaction gave the Brown family two-thirds supermajority of the team’s stock – and unquestioned control of the team and its finances.

As part of that transaction, the Brown family also agreed to pay dividends to shareholders.

That resulted in tens of millions of dollars in dividends paid to Knowlton, but also resulted in $48 million in dividends going to the other large shareholder – the Brown family.

Edward Vonderbrink, a certified public accountant, reviewed the team’s and Knowlton’s finances as part of Knowlton’s estate lawsuit and testified “the Brown family for a period of years has meticulously and methodically bought back as much stock in the Bengals as they could conceivably buy back.”

Vonderbrink also said in his deposition that John Sawyer sold his one share in the Bengals “to the Brown family or Mike Brown for $325,000.”

Sawyer and Knowlton provided much of the money to establish the Bengals as an NFL franchise in 1968.

In 1980, for example, Sawyer owned 213 and Knowlton owned 249 – for a total of 462 – of the 586 total shares of Bengals stock. At the same time Paul Brown owned 118 shares and his sons, Mike and Pete, owned one share each. Four others owned one share each.

At the beginning of 2011, Knowlton’s estate was valued at $67.4 million plus the value of the 176 shares of the Bengals.

That stock provides Knowlton’s estate with millions in income annually.

In 2009, the Bengals paid Knowlton’s estate annual dividends of $5,469,931 for his 176 shares of stock, or $31,079 per share.

That means the owners of the remaining 410 shares of stock – the Brown family owns all but a handful of those – received annual dividends from the team of $12.7 million.

In 2010, Knowlton’s estate received $5,007,768 in dividends, or $28,453 per share. That means the other 410 shares received a total of $11.7 million in dividends.

It’s not clear from the court documents if those are the total dividends paid or, as was the team’s practice for decades, the money needed for shareholders to pay the tax on the overall dividends. Lindberg said in his deposition there were no team stock dividends from 1980 to 1998.

On the field, the current Bengals are 8-6, but through six regular-season home games they are averaging only 48,216 fans per game, 73.6 percent capacity, both lowest in the league. Saturday’s game against Arizona is blacked out locally.

Asked if Brown had done a good job managing the business of the Bengals, Zimbalist said he “wouldn’t be too lavish in (his) praise for Bengals ownership.

“I don’t think he’s done a great job of building relationships with the community, or of putting a winning product on the field,” Zimbalist said. “He hasn’t fully exploited his revenue opportunities.”

But in terms of keeping the team “in the family” and honoring his father’s wishes that way, it’s been a success, Zimbalist said.